He says that a Heliopolis

'He says that at Heliopolis in Syria Asklepiades made the ascent of Mount Libanos and saw many of the so-called baitylia or baityloi concerning which he reports countless marvels worthy of an unhallowed tongue. He declares too that he himself and Isidoros subsequently witnessed these things with their own eyes....

I saw, he says, the baity los moving through the air. It was sometimes concealed in its garments, sometimes again carried in the hands of its ministrant. The ministrant of the baity los was named Eusebios^. This man stated that there had once come upon him a sudden and unexpected desire to roam at midnight away from the town of Emesa as far as he could get towards the hill on which stands the ancient and magnificent temple of Athena. So he went as quickly as possible to the foot of the hill, and there sat down to rest after his journey. Suddenly he saw a globe of fire leap down from above, and a great lion standing beside the globe. The lion indeed vanished immediately, but he himself ran up to the globe as the fire died down and found it to be the batty los. He took it up and asked it to which of the gods it might belong. It replied that it belonged to Gemiaios., the "Noble One." (Now the men of Heliopolis worship this Gennaios and have set up a lion-shaped'' image of him in the temple of Zeus.) He took it home with him the self-same night, travelling, so he said, a distance not less than two hundred and ten furlongs. Eusebios, however, was not master of the movements of his baitylos, as others are of theirs ; but he offered petitions and prayers, while it answered with oracular responses.

Having told us this trash and much more to the same effect, our author, who is veritably worthy of his own baitylia, adds a description of the stone and its appearance. It was, he says, an exact globe, whitish in colour, three hand- breadths across. But at times it grew bigger, or smaller ; and at other times it took on a purple hue. He showed us, too, letters that were written on the stone, painted in the pigment called tingdbari, "cinnabar." Also it knocked on a wall ; for this was the means by which it gave the enquirer his desired response, uttering a low hissing sound, which Eusebios interpreted.

After detailing these marvels and many others even more remarkable concerning the baitylos this empty-headed fellow continues : " I thought the whole business of the baitylos savoured of some god; but Isidoros ascribed it rather to a daimon. There was, he said, a daitnon who moved it — not one of the harmful nor of the over-material kind, yet not of those either that have attained to the immaterial kind nor of those that are altogether pure." He adds in his blasphemous way that different baityloi are dedicated to different deities — Kronos, Zeus, Helios, etc'

Arthur Bernard Cook. Zeus: a study in ancient religion, III. Cambridge: University Press, 1940.